- Location
- Duluth, Minnesota
Cooler water has a higher saturation rate than warmer water and there is less precipitation in the local area and less salt deposits in the container. Some salts use anhydrous salt, meaning no water looked up in the crystal lattice. Thus, the exothermic reaction is self heating the water more which can cause further precipitation. The new SeaChem Labs Salinity was notorious for this till I suggested to change the mixing instructions. Once mixed then warm it up to temp. Salts that dissolved easy do so for two reason. 1.) They use hydrated salts which make them dissolve quicker as the local area is less saturated. 2) Having slightly higher Chloride, as some do, lowers the activity coefficient allowing salts to dissolve easier as that increase the saturation rate. The hobbyists has no clue of 1 & 2 so they can correct for these by adding the salt slower and or cooler water to be sure.
I don't know what salt someone is using or how quickly they are dumping in the dry salt into the mixing container or if they mixed the dry mix first or what their mixing temp is. And I don't know or have a data sheet of which salts are in the " bag" they are selling. They don't give that out and till this day nobody has done a XRD on the dry mix which tells you EXACTLY ( meaning for example;which type of mag-chloride and how much of each and the impurities of each and how much) what is in that dry mix. Some, such as yourself and others, may not have these issues, but you and others are not everybody.
I don't know what salt someone is using or how quickly they are dumping in the dry salt into the mixing container or if they mixed the dry mix first or what their mixing temp is. And I don't know or have a data sheet of which salts are in the " bag" they are selling. They don't give that out and till this day nobody has done a XRD on the dry mix which tells you EXACTLY ( meaning for example;which type of mag-chloride and how much of each and the impurities of each and how much) what is in that dry mix. Some, such as yourself and others, may not have these issues, but you and others are not everybody.
